The island of La Graciosa experienced a new historic milestone this weekend, with the first official football match in history being played there. The Club Deportivo Tahíche youth team traveled to the small island with the firm intention of taking the points at stake against Club Deportivo Teguise C, the name under which the Gracioseros team is competing in their debut season.
The first surprise of the morning was taken by the players of the Lanzarote team, as many of them thought it was a joke that there were dirt football fields.... and when they saw that it was true, they were excited to play on a different surface than usual. A few years ago, the dream of a grassroots footballer was to play on grass, even if it was artificial.
Many anecdotes surrounded the match from before its start. First, an error when communicating the time of the boat that the referee had to take forced the start of the match to be postponed for a few minutes. Then, the lack of information about the administrative management of a club led to a few minutes of uncertainty because the local team had not brought balls to play the match, believing that the referee was the one who brought them. It was necessary to improvise, with the local players themselves taking the balls they had in their homes. Another of the administrative problems was with the player registrations, but it was quickly resolved, as well as the local delegate's lack of knowledge to pay for the refereeing, as he did not know that he had to do it, thinking that the City Council was in charge of that, but it was finally resolved.
On the field, there were also anecdotal moments that demonstrated the local inexperience, with the collaboration of the referee who explained concepts of the regulations to them, and of the visiting players who behaved exemplarily towards the novice local players. Until now, only futsal was played in La Graciosa and that led to confusion for the local players who did not know how to take a throw-in or even committed the occasional back-pass to the goalkeeper, apart from the errors in positioning due to their inexperience in this sport.
From the beginning, it was clear that Club Deportivo Tahíche would have no problems defeating the team from the Eighth Island and in the first minute of play they were already winning by 2 goals to 0. Juanito was the author of the first official goal on the island of La Graciosa, a fact that will go down in history. The visiting coach gave instructions to his players to share the ball with the opponent and not do so much damage to the local players who, on the other hand, were not even of youth age in many cases.
As the minutes passed, the visiting players felt much more comfortable and forgot the premises given by their bench, scoring a good number of goals before going to halftime. With the result of 0 to 13, the first half came to an end.
In the second half, the dynamic was very similar and despite the large number of goals conceded by the Gracioseros, they never lost their good manners or their smile because they knew they were making history in the sport of the island.
The match concluded with the result of 0 to 24, but both teams knew very well what they had to do. On the one hand, the local team had to lay the first stone for the future and learn from the mistakes made, while the visiting team had to understand that the situation in which they usually play football is not the same as that of other children, with whom they laughed and shared stories at the end of the match.
Now the important thing is that the children of La Graciosa do not get discouraged, gradually learn and enjoy a season where they will travel around Lanzarote, play on artificial turf fields and open the way for more children from La Graciosa to start playing football.
Technical Details
CD Teguise – La Graciosa: Airam, Adriano, Iker, Amaro, Gabriela, Álvaro, Jose, Aroa, Alexis and Fernando
CD Tahíche: Juan Jesús, Juanito (1), Darío, Carlos, Álex (3), Kevin (4), Mateo (2), Jose (3), Dilan (4), Nolo, Sacha (1), Maikel (6) and Nico
Referee: Raúl Curbelo. No cards
